Badmojojojo said that the game needs a way to tutor out your clan champs. Of course, you can't really do this via the conflict deck since provinces always refill. So here was my basic idea. You make a neutral holding with text along the lines of the Imperial Storehouse. Here's four reasonable variants:

"Action: Sacrifice this holding to search your deck for a unique character and place it face up at this province"

"Action: Sacrifice this holding to search your deck for a unique character, reveal it, and place it face down at this province"

"Action: Pay one fate and sacrifice this holding to search your deck for a unique character and place it face up at this province"

"Action: Pay one fate and sacrifice this holding to search your deck for a unique character, cost 5 or higher, and place it face up at this province"

There are a lot of people who believe games hinge on getting clan champs out in a timely manner. Others don't. I'm wondering if a card of this nature would be good or bad for the game. Also, how much should such an effect cost? Everything ultimately has a price that is too high. Wondering what people think about this type of mechanic.

I think this is not a good idea. Tutor effects that go deck deep are among the most powerful effects a card game can have. If you introduce them in the game, it is only a matter of time before it turns into an arms race to see which deck has the most and which has most powerful cards to abuse them with. I believe FFG knows better than to start printing cards like that.

It's a 40 card deck, and 3 copies of your champ. If you need your champ, or any x card to be in your opening set you can mulligan down for it. Out of 8 cards (4 + up to 4 mulligan) to start the game you have about 50/50 chance of getting that one card. I don't think we need more than that because it means turn 2 you have about 80% chance of champion showing with an aggressive mulligan.

I don't doubt we'll eventually have some tutor abilities, but I don't think they are needed at this point. This is also the core set release, there are likely many mechanics that will come to the game after this set release but for now the game should stay more stable - which means what you draw is what you get.

13 minutes ago, shosuko said:

It's a 40 card deck, and 3 copies of your champ. If you need your champ, or any x card to be in your opening set you can mulligan down for it. Out of 8 cards (4 + up to 4 mulligan) to start the game you have about 50/50 chance of getting that one card. I don't think we need more than that because it means turn 2 you have about 80% chance of champion showing with an aggressive mulligan.

I don't doubt we'll eventually have some tutor abilities, but I don't think they are needed at this point. This is also the core set release, there are likely many mechanics that will come to the game after this set release but for now the game should stay more stable - which means what you draw is what you get.

If you hard mulligan for the champ you have roughly 50% to hit. On turn 2, chances to hit(36 card deck, 4 chances, 3 success hits) is about 30%. So the probably of missing on both turn 1 with a hard mulligan and turn 2 with a full 4 card flip is is about 35%.

Or in other words you'll have your champ by turn 2 65% of the time. Pretty decent odds, but being able to raise that percentage even higher is worth discussing.

I think a search for a Champ is fine, however, I feel it should have more restrictions, like "if an opponent has a character with the Champion trait in play......." and I think it should be a conflict card.

Is rather see an evening of the playing field than a race for the champ with everyone building decks with a mentality of using champ->searcher->deck thinning and then filling in with the rest. Besides some decks might not even run their champ.

As a conflict card it's now something that could end up being a dead card vs people who don't play or see their champ and if you are digging for a conflict card you have to mange it through your honor instead of just burning through your dynasty at no cost.

I'm all for anything that promotes parity without creating other ways to abuse the game mechanics.

I was thinking more along the lines of a 5 cost conflict card that cannot be played during conflict. Something like this:

6 fate "Action: Search your deck for a 5 cost champion. Reveal it, put it into play with 1 fate on it, shuffle your deck. This cannot be played during a conflict."

Champions are not always good for a deck depending on the build, but they are fun. I thought this would help them see play as the Dynasty draw is almost too random as to sometimes be not fun.

1 hour ago, Badmojojojo said:

I was thinking more along the lines of a 5 cost conflict card that cannot be played during conflict. Something like this:

6 fate "Action: Search your deck for a 5 cost champion. Reveal it, put it into play with 1 fate on it, shuffle your deck. This cannot be played during a conflict."

Champions are not always good for a deck depending on the build, but they are fun. I thought this would help them see play as the Dynasty draw is almost too random as to sometimes be not fun.

I feel like that's still incredibly OP, if the champ gets a fate on it then you basically are getting a 0 cost conflict card to pull a champ from anywhere in your deck and put them into play. Even if it can't be used during a conflict, it could easily be used between conflicts for a huge boost for extra defense or potentially even breaking a 2nd province. I would feel better with something like a holding that you can sacrifice the top X cards in your dynasty deck to reveal a unique character and place face up I the holding's province. Maybe X could be a fixed number like 5 or 10, or maybe it could be something like where X is your current honor.

Or, instead of a holding, make it a conflict card with cost like 1 or 2 fate with the same general ability, except you have to either place the champ in an already empty province, or discard a card from a province to place the champ face up if there isn't an open province.

Your argument of "Who gets to have their champion out first" wouldn't be solved by tutor effects because then it would just turn into "Who gets to FIND their tutor card first."

Card games are inherently a game of "Who gets their strong cards out first." Proper deckbuilding helps tip the odds in your favor but it all boils down to that. You'll always be at the mercy of probability, and that's how it always should be.

Also as you have already said, not all champions are good for a certain deckbuild. A way to get those cards out more consistently will just compound the problems the design imbalance between champions did.

From recent LCGs, it's unlikely that we'll see an unrestricted tutor. They seem to have gone along the lines of "Search the top X cards of your deck" for both Conquest and AGOT, and I don't see that changing here. It's entirely possible to see a "Pay 1 fate, sacrifice this holding, search the top 10 cards of dynasty for a character, place it in this province face-up" card at some point, but I don't think it will be necessary in the core set. This isn't a game of champ vs champ, and I wouldn't want it to be that way. I don't think any of the champs are necessary to win right now, and if they were played every game, we'd get tired of them pretty quick. I'd rather have them come up every other game or so for a few turns and have a reasonably big impact, they'd feel good to play then.

I designed the Phoenix version:

Remove this holding from the game: Search your dynasty deck for target SHIBA UJIMITSU and refill this province with him, face up.

Losing to probability is demoralizing so it should be the number one deck design target to remedy. Were there any search cards in Old 5 R?

13 minutes ago, Badmojojojo said:

Losing to probability is demoralizing so it should be the number one deck design target to remedy. Were there any search cards in Old 5 R?

Designing your deck to account for probability is much better than introducing "find a card" abilities. I don't like it when games limit you to 1 copy of a card in a deck, because that gives probability much more sway in a game and you can't build your deck around that without tutor type abilities. If you can put in play sets of the cards you need, and there are more options than just 1 to win a game, then its not nearly so bad without tutor.

We have static fate so you already can't be gold screwed, and I'm not sure of any gaming winning combos that you would wanna really dive for.

4 hours ago, Nickciufi said:

I designed the Phoenix version:

Remove this holding from the game: Search your dynasty deck for target SHIBA UJIMITSU and refill this province with him, face up.

...and if you can't find him, lose the game. ::poor Ujimitsu::

Lion gets the same thing for Akodo Arasou.

19 hours ago, Badmojojojo said:

Losing to probability is demoralizing so it should be the number one deck design target to remedy. Were there any search cards in Old 5 R?

Yes, but they were generally only used for Enlightment, since you needed to tutor for the Ring cards (Which were unique, IE 1 per deck and required to be in your hand to win the game). There were a few others similar to Agasha Swordsmith (I want to say he was the direct copy of a Kensai Fate (Conflict) effect), and there were maybe a few direct tutors for spells or items. Note Followers, Spells and Items were all attachments, but separate cards types in old L5R.

In terms of this thread, tutors shouldn't be necessary, beyond the extent of what we get out of something like Agasha swordsmith. Filtering the top is one thing, but flat out search should not be necessary, or should be very costly. Part of the game is dealing with the fact your opponent flipped his champion and you don't have one to counter it. If that flat out makes you lose, you may want to rethink your deck.

Tutors are terrible in card games, IMO. The reason is every deck would run it or be at a huge disadvantage. When a card or non-core mechanic is so good that it is good for every deck then it makes for a very uniform and bland game state.

21 hours ago, Badmojojojo said:

Losing to probability is demoralizing so it should be the number one deck design target to remedy. Were there any search cards in Old 5 R?

There were more than a few. Some of the better ones include Imperial Gift, Boundless Sight, A New Wall, Wisdom Gained, Fortune's Gift, and of course the whole "legacy holding" thing.

Old5R did have deck search for some Characters, there was an "Event" (Events were in your Dynasty Deck) that let you Discard a personality to search for a equal or cheaper personality, and I cannot remember if they come into play or were put into a Province.

What was more common though was Deck acceleration, replace cards face up, cycle your provinces, etc...